Podcast

Join us as we travel to business schools across the country and around the world to bring you an in-depth profile of life and times on campus. This time we travel to Michigan to spend a week at Stephen M. Ross School of Business. Listen in as we meet with current students in Ross's various MBA programs, admission's officers, the dean and others.

The Ross School of Business is known for unique programming that develops leadership through action-based learning. Ross MBA students are challenged to apply their skills and develop new ones in team-based multidisciplinary projects. They work with peers and faculty in real time for real stakes for real companies in locations around the world. By building bridges between the classroom experience and real organizational settings, the Ross School seeks to teach leadership not just by example, but by practice, as well. Click here to visit the Ross website.

Graham Mercer, Assistant Dean for Strategic Planning and Special Projects

Gwyneth Slocum Bailey, Associate Director of Admissions

Valerie Suslow, Associate Dean for Degree Programs

Carmen Tapia, First-Year MBA Student

Eun Ja Yu, Associate Director of Admissions

“My name it’s, Carmen Tapia.” and I’m Diana Jordan with MBApodcaster.com. Welcome to a day in the life at the Ross School of Business. Formerly known as the University of Michigan Business School. “One thing that I like about Ross and one of the reasons I applied is that I like the people.” It is orientation week for first year MBA students at Ross, “This is your binder, your name tags should be in your welcome packet.” This experience is known as the foundation session of the Ross leadership initiative and Susan Ashford, the Associate Dean for Leadership Programming for the Ross School of Business is running the show, “We need to put them in some situations that test and push them on their innovativeness, their proposition abilities and their creativity.”

One of Susan Ashford’s ideas is to introduce the business students to Robert McKee a Hollywood screenwriter, the idea to teach business leaders how to tell a riveting story and to Jeff DeGraff, a professor and author of several books on creativity. Jeff leads a workshop to guide the students toward innovation and growth, “Leadership isn’t about finding what is wrong with us it’s about figuring out about what’s right and taking a course of action, making a decision.”

Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan

At Ross business students are encouraged to think and act outside the box. Sitting still at a lecture hall is not Ross. Every year the orientation evolves as one alumnist observes 1992 business school graduate Ralph Johnson who works at McKenzie in Chicago and returns to MC the mystery challenge that culminates the first two days. “When I came to the University of Michigan Business School at that time our orientation was two days and one day of it was taking pre-exams so it was nothing so grand as all of this.”

Welcome to Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, I am shadowing Carmon Tapia in her first few days as a student. So hello. “Hi Diana, how are you?” It’s nice to meet you. What are we going to be doing today, do you know? “Today is the start of the Ross Foundation Initiative and we’re starting with a breakfast and we have a lot of our whole plan in …..building. I’m really excited.” And we are drenched, a thunderstorm has dowsed staff and students as they made their way to the opening breakfast where tables are piled high with yogurt and fruit and juices. Where are you from? “Peru.” So this is a little bit different environment, we’ve got thunderstorms and lighting and all kinds of things going on here. “Yeah it’s kind of a shock for me. I’m from Lima in Peru and it’s basically the same weather, it doesn’t change too much around the year and I came here and it got sunny days, it was really lovely and then one day storms. But I am getting used to it. One thing that I like about Ross and one of the reasons that I applied is I liked the people, all the people that I met the first time that I came here to visit two years ago all of the people were really friendly, I emailed some, get to talk to them to have an idea of the Ross experience. They were really helpful, really open to talk to me it really made a difference.”

Also at this breakfast, women who work in admissions beginning with Heather Eckner, Associate Director in Admissions and Eun Ja Yu, Associate Director in Admissions. Kind of like sticky.

How many people come to, is everybody? “All of the incoming students so like 420, they all, it’s mandatory that they attend this. It’s essentially the orientation and they kind of pull into the leadership development portion of it so yeah everybody comes.”

So what’s your name? “I’m Heather Eckner with the Ross Admissions Group. I’m an Associate Director of Admissions.” And what’s your name? “Andrea Hue, Associate Director of Admissions.” So what’s it like to see all of these people that you admitted? “It is so exciting. Especially the ones that came over seas as well. Some of the domestic people we’ve met, it’s already a family feel and it’s only day one.” My student’s Carmen and she’s from Peru, what other countries do you have represented here? “We’ve got lots of people from China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, many parts of Latin America, Europe, Eastern Europe, and just about almost all of the United States.”

What is the draw? Why do people come from all over the world to come to Ross? “Ross is one of the best business schools that have our course signatures, our action based learning so we’re not just teaching people theory but that they can take some of this, the things that they learn and really use it right away, even before they graduate.” So what’s your role in all of this? “So I’ve been part of the whole process, recruiting the class, reading their applications, making final decisions and then once we admit them then the work of helping them choose Ross, get to know Ross well. It’s very exciting. I’ve done this for nine years and it’s still, this day is still so exciting for me when everything will come together because I know the work that we did behind it. But the great thing is that we have so many events both during the recruiting process as well as after they are admitted that a lot of these students know each other. This is a community and they’ll have a life long relationship and I love that because having been here long enough I know people stay connected and Michigan Alumni it’s really true, they’re committed.” During this breakfast these students enter their first minutes of Ross where they will spend their next 20 months, circulate, network get to know each other. Carmen is in section five. There are six sections each with about 70 students and a student introducing herself as Jessica comes over to Carmen saying she is also in Section 5. “Where are you staying?” “I’m living at Nob Hill, it’s on Main and Hill.” “That’s pretty close.” “Yes, that is pretty close; it’s like 15 minute walk.” “Are you going to get a car?” “No I will see if I can live without it.” “I’m going to wait until winter to see if I can live without it.” “That’s the same with me, we’ll see.” “I’m staying with Murray Gardens; it’s like 10 minutes away by bus. Two years ago I visited a friend who was staying there and I really liked it. So that was it for me, I didn’t search anymore.” And you went online to find your Jessica? “I did. They have an online group for first year MBAs so everyone can communicate there. So that’s how I found my roommate.”

Carmen Tapia is 28 years old and has followed brother, a doctor to Anarbor, Michigan. She’s thinking of getting her MBA at Ross and staying in the US instead of returning to Peru. What are your goals and dreams? If that’s not such a huge question for the morning, I mean it’s not even breakfast yet. “My goal is to work at something that really makes me happy and to feel that I make a difference. When I worked in finance and finance oriented to the development of developing countries, I really would like to continue in something like that because it was like finance which is a thing that I have been specialized in but it had another aspect that touched international development.”

Breakfast and networking are over. Now Carmen and more than 400 other brand new Ross Business School Students pour into Rackum auditorium. They are greeted by the school’s anthem, second year students cheering them on and Dean Robert J. Dolan. “Class of 2009, you guys here?” “I would like to introduce our king, Bob Dolan” “Good morning everybody, good to have you all here ….so welcome to you all. The first day of our program is always a fabulous, you know the last day is kind of nice too, graduation day about 600 days to get there.” I’m stepping aside to have a brief conversation with Dean Robert Dolan, he’s been the dean for seven years and each year he says see more innovation, more creativity. “We graduate about 430 MBA students a year and our vision is that the 430 people that we have, I think of it as three levels. One I hope our program really helps them derive satisfactions for themselves in meeting the goals that they’ve set for themselves. Secondly, I hope that our students involvement in the organizations that they work with helps those organizations to meet their expectations. But then thirdly, we’re really trying to operate at the level of saying well with all of the issues in the world it is going to take business leadership really to ensure that the citizens in the world have a very productive and happy life. If you think about what is going on the in the world right now, we have 6.7 billion people in the world and 4 billion of them have historically have not been connected to the global economy. Basically 4 billion people living on less than $2 a day. Now technology is connecting those people up to the world economy and so when you think about what this next generation of business leaders is going to impact it’s going to impact the involvement of two thirds of the citizens of the world who have not been part of the global economy. It’s going to impact how they become part of that global economy so it’s an exciting time with all of the changes going on in the world and we have aspirations for success of our students and their achievement of their aspirations at three levels, the individual, the organizational level and really at the level of world peace and welfare of the citizens of the world.”

Now that Dean Dolan has welcomed the students, Susan Ashford, Associate Dean for leadership takes the stage, “My name is, Susan Ashford. Welcome and I’m over leadership. I think the best thing that you could be known as in life is a good leader. I think the best thing you could recognize in someone else is their leadership potential. Because creating leadership is about making a difference, making important things happen in the world. Or making a difference in small ways through the people around you. It’s about doing something and really having your life lived with a purpose.”

Dean Ashford sets the stage for what is to come, “We have a particular stance, I will share it with you right in the beginning, we believe leaders are made as well as born. We believe that every single person in this room has the leadership potential and can grow their leadership potential over their time with us. We believe as a business school that leadership and development experiences, there are very few times when you will be lectured at about leadership. We actually want to get you doing and reflecting on what you’re doing and learning from that. It’s the whole part of our school and I think the world is catching up to us toward what people believe in the whole leadership industry about how best to grow leaders. That they’re growing through putting them in appropriate experiences hoping that they’ll learn from them.”

In one of the very few times these Ross students will be seated listening to a lecture, Sue Ashford gives them one more challenge, “Some things that are going to see a little weird and you’re going to have some uncertainty about exactly what you’re supposed to do. In other words the program in this week of your MBA program is going to be perhaps the best rendition of the real world that you’ll find in your entire MBA program.”

I asked for and received time outside the auditorium to talk with Sue Ashford. The Deans at Ross seem very accessible. In your speech a moment ago to the students, some of the words popped out and you could hear the students reacting. You used the word, ‘weird’ what are you introducing to them that might be a little outside the box? “One of the things that we think that leaders in the future, the future we’re preparing these students for is going to demand that leaders will be creativity and innovativeness and it will also be a greater ability to improvise as they go through making decisions and taking actions that are effective for their world and the businesses that they’re in. So in order to get them comfortable with that we need to put them in some situations that test and push them on their innovativeness, their improvising abilities and their creativity. You don’t get them there by giving them traditional business cases, having them sit in rows in a classroom and come up with a response. So some of the things that we’re going to ask them to do on this their very first day at this business school are going to be strange, starting off with having a screen writer coach teach them about storytelling. There’s a bit of a bridge to that concept because they know as leaders they need to persuade followers but instead of having some leader who also believes that come in and give them a PowerPoint presentation on how to persuade followers through storytelling, we’re having Robert McKee come in and I think he’s going to be quite unusual for them. I think the experience is going to be weird at moments. The reason why we’re doing that is we want to break their frame a little bit, the frame that they have based on their set of expectations about what it means to be a business student, what is means to learn and develop as a professional in the business world.”

Next, the more than 400 first year Ross business school students spill out on to the field to build and test their leadership skills. I walk up to group of about a dozen students, they’re doing leadership exercises. One of the students in Carmen’s group has taken the leadership position reading the directions. There is a rope about three feet off the ground and they discover how to get everyone over it without touching the pretend electric wire. “So electric fence, a team must form a circle by holding hands. The circle can be broken at one point only to form a continuous line. The team must cross over a fixed lined without touching it or breaking the hand hold.” “Yeah we can do that, we can do it.” “You’re going to have to go first. The first and last people have to be sure they can get over it.” “I think that was beautiful choreography.” “After each game we have to debrief to see how the team worked, if we accomplished our goals.” “Rose is not organized in a way that…” That’s pretty cool, huh? “Yeah I think we’re kind of working better and better with each step. That was really crippling. We are always trying to coordinate before starting to the task and it’s been working.”

During these exercises you can hear the team building as well as the construction in the background. Hanging out nearby these leadership games, Graham Mercer, he’s Assistant Dean at Ross Business School. We’re hearing sounds of construction, what’s going on? “Well there’s construction at the University on quite a wide scale. We have our own construction going on at the business school, we’re building a new facility so we’re well used to all of these different sounds as we go through this. This is not new to us.” Let me ask you about the new school, what’s it going to be like for these students? Especially students like Carmen who is going to be in that building soon. We actually really designed the new building on three dimensions. One was functionality because the building has got to function and all we really wanted to have is a building that function wells in the actual learning team environment that we try to create here at Ross and also create a sense of community was a big part for us. There is also recognition that people spend so much time on our business school campus these days you know some of them are there for 18 hours so you got to be able to cater to all of the different needs. So it’s going to be a very comfortable building, there’s lots of open space, lots of light, lots of glass, lots of space for big gatherings, lots of space for team meetings, lots of place for what we like to think of serendipity meetings so the faculty has a chance to meet students by happen chance more than anything and engage in conversations so we’re pretty excited about the whole thing.”

Time to debrief Carmen, we talk about these exercises; they’re complex and challenging and designed to inspire team building. “I think it was really fun, we learned how to work together, we started first trying things out, we completed six. In each one there was like a natural leader we first planned on how we were going to do the things. Sometimes they didn’t work so we had to plan again but it seemed to work fine.” You’re basically building your team now, right? “Yeah.” I mean these are the people who you are going to be with? “They are from my section for the first term, for all of the fall they are going to be in all of my classes.”

The first year Ross business school students are about to learn storytelling from a master, Robert McKee, is a trained actor and creative writer. He directed award winning films and has written award winning screen plays. And Associate Dean Sue Ashford says when they called McKee to invite him, there was a surprise. “We found out in our first phone conversation with him something that we didn’t know about him prior to that is that he holds not one but two degrees from the University of Michigan.” Ashford stands before the students introducing the next challenge for these business students and explaining how a storyteller’s angle is applicable to future leaders. “There’s a little bit of a medium is the message for me. One of the things I think about leaders of the future is that they’re going to have to be very open to learnings from a lot of different areas. We in the business world focus pretty narrowly and analytically we have a lot of answers, there’s a lot of powerhouse tools that come out of here but there are a lot of other disciplines to teach us about how to lead well, about how to lead affectively. So I think has a lot to tell us. I think also if we remember that you will remember that next time a lesson comes from left field or right field, some place you’re not expecting it.”

Robert McKee says the three types of persuasion are cohersion, rhetoric, and story. He spares no mercy on the typical business tool, the power point. He says it doesn’t work because the audience knows the speaker who is using it is lying. PowerPoint’s never include the negative. But McKee says the story makes your audience believe you understand them and he challenges the students to take a case study and create a story that will persuade. He wants them to answer the question what is the truth? What is the insighting incident that upsets the balance of forces in this company’s life? What is the object of desire? I checked in with Carmen when the time was up but she was buzzing in conversation with her group about their case study. Working on their story. So I decided to check in with her after the presentation. There are three case studies and only a few students will go to the stage and present. Carmen’s group is not one of them but coincidentally she has the same case study as the group that is chosen to rise to McKee’s challenge. “Well good afternoon, thank you very much for giving us your five minutes to present our the story of our product. This product has a real story behind it. It is the genesis of a great personal experience I’ve had. Throughout my childhood I truly enjoyed a very active relationship and friendship with my grandmother who taught me how to water ski, she taught me how to play tennis, and believe it or not she taught me to shoot, track and ski.” The story continues, the business student explains how her grandmother developed arthritis and couldn’t open those childproof, tamperproof, medicine bottles so he developed a creative bottle top and wanted an angel investor to help take it to market.

The winds are starting to whip around us, another storm is brewing. It is nearly the end of the day, I ask Carmen about her experience with the storytelling segment of the Ross Leadership Initiative. When you get done with the experience working with the group it sounded like you weren’t really ready? “Yeah we weren’t. We kind of had some main points that we didn’t get the time to wrap up; I have like this story ready. If we were called we were going to figure out at that moment what to say because we had a story ready, we had all the ideas but we hadn’t really prepared the story as to read it just like that.” So what was this whole experience like for you? “For me it has been really challenging, I think that the main two points that I get from is how important it is to be creative and another point that I think was really important was to be really aware of the audience.”

Sue Ashford gives us a hint as to what tomorrow will bring, “We’re going to meet tomorrow 8AM, tomorrow is innovation group camp.” It’s the second day and Carmen has been thinking about the upcoming assignment to express what is leadership for a video, “…..I am really tired but now I am back with all my strength.” What is leadership to you? “For me it is a lot of things, but mainly I think it is to pursue your goals, never give up and do this to have an impact in society leading people.” We talk about Carmen’s life, “I used to live with my parents in Peru. We’re only two of us, my brother and I. He’s a doctor and he’s right now in Detroit doing his residency. He wants to be an oncologist. So that’s basically the four of us, my parents. We’re a pretty close family, I lived with them until right now and they are always there for us to help us, to support us in any way.” How old are you? “I’m 28.” Do you have aspirations of a family of your own? “Yes, I do. I have a boyfriend back in Lima. I don’t know if I will come back to Lima or if he will come here after graduation. It depends on where I have an opportunity to work and he has an opportunity to work. My aspiration is to have a good job, a job that satisfies me and makes me feel that I have an impact but is to be able to balance my work life and my social life.”

It’s about time for Innovation Boot camp and we move in mass into a room with chairs fashioned into circles of eight with markers and post-it notes and easels the center of each circle. Sue Ashford gets the day started, “So it’s my great pleasure to introduce Jeff DeGraff. Jeff DeGraff is a member of our faculty of the management organization group but he is really a man of the world, Jeff is having more and more impact on practice. He has been on our faculty since 1990 but right now he’s zooming around the country and the world. I mostly see Jeff in …airport. He’s busy finding that influence on practice in the area of creativity and innovation. He consults to many of the top firms that you would care about and they turn to him because they’re trying to figure out how do we get things to stop in …form and get change to happen, get innovation to happen. What they’re recognizing is that is the differentiator in the world they work in for competition. Jeff is just one of the most innovative, exciting people I know to interact with. So I know you’re going to enjoy the day and I know several you you’re energy is lagging but don’t worry he’s got energy to spare today. Please join me in welcoming Jeff.” “Good morning. I hear that yesterday’s….people who are far apart. So we’re going to tell a story this morning and the story this morning is about how the way we work and what MBAs will be learning in the future. What we’re going to talk today about recreating yourself. We’re going to talk about your greatest work of art which is yourself. Now that you’ve probably this illusion that you’re….” Jeff DeGraff challenges the business students to create a storyboard of their own lives. And there’s more. “What you’re ….is more one, four page, yellow page pad with a picture and it’s not a picture of you. And you’re telling us, why you, why brand you, why should I hire you? Why should I come see you? Why you? What is it about your product service that makes you special? Find your voice, find what is unique about you. It’s now 10 minutes to, I’m going to give you until a quarter after to do this.”

While the students grab markers and work their stories through with each other Jeff DeGraff and I find a quiet place to talk about their philosophy. “I want them to understand that the world of business that they’re entering is infinitely more exciting and has incredible opportunities. If they can harness their imagination and they connect it to producing meaningful commerce and that in a sense the new frontier of art and the new frontier of creativity is really business.”

By now the students have created their new brand and their yellow page ad. As we leave the room, Carmen and I check in about this latest experience “It really made me think because when they ask tell us your story, I thought it would include like the material I prepared for the application for the MBA but then I kind of rethink what makes me different, makes me, what kind of events in my life made me who I am. That’s really nice when you narrow, it’s not like everyday that you start thinking really close to analyze your life and kind of think through all of your life, what were the things that you think make you different from all of the rest. I made this year and I had a chance to share of it with all of the girls here and they share their stories with me and we get to know each other and it’s been an amazing experience.”

Admissions Director, Soojin Kwon Koh reveals her perspective on Ross students, “It’s for them to think about themselves from a new perspective and this whole innovation concept will enable them to be more successful leaders as they go out into their professions and help them approach situations more creatively than the next MBA.” What can you tell me about admissions? It seems we get a lot of diversity in our students and the backgrounds and the experiences that they have had, it’s just phenomenal, it’s just more and more exciting and interesting what they bring to the table and that’s something that we strive for, to not just bring in a class of students who did the same kind of thing but can add a lot to the learning experience of their peers.” You’ve got a lot of different nations represented here. “We’ve got about 27 nations represented this year and about a third of our class is international and that doesn’t include all of the international experiences that the students who are not citizens of another country came from.” Is there anybody that you looked at that are some examples of people who are really outside of the box, the type of student where you went well we’re taking a chance here. “We’ve got someone who did improv comedy, someone who is a navy seal.” What’s the whole idea behind collecting such different types of people? “They bring a different perspective. If you’ve climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, you’re going to see the world a bit differently. Not just from the height stand point but also from the sense of accomplishment. Or someone who’s done the improv, they’re going to think about issues in a very different way and one of the things that we want students to come away with is how to think about problems from a different perspective, not just thinking about it from their own paradigm or their own set of experiences but how might somebody else who is very different from me think about it.”

The 430 students are now headed to a field with six tents, one for each section. Plus a cooking tent and an eating tent. So what do you know? “Not much but I’m guessing that we’re going to cook something. The next challenges are called the mystery challenges so we’re not supposed to know anything about them but I can see in the tent right now they have some baking stuff so I’m guessing we’re cooking something. I don’t know what. It’s going to be fun.” “Welcome to Grill for Glory. This is set for the foundations section where it puts all of your skills, the ones we brought with us, the ones we’ve been working on to the test. Grill for Glory is a set of four interrelated section challenges. Each one has points attached to it. Points are critical for winning the section challenge team rights, the grand prize. Remember what it is? The tailgate and plaque. Alright the first challenge is to plan, prepare, and serve a creative meal of your choice that will feed approximately 80 people. The second challenge to market and present that meal to a panel of judges and the other teams. The third challenge, since those only test certain skills is to create a unique entertainment piece that will last no more than five minutes for our after dinner enjoyment. The final challenge as we have gone green this week is eco-awareness. You have two and a half hours, not one minute more.”

And with MC and alumnist Ralph Johnson guiding the business students, it is time. “On the count of three. One, Two, Three, ……Alright.” Oh boy, where are you going? “Tent number five but I don’t know which one it is.” What are you thinking about this whole ordeal? “This is going to be fun.” About an hour later, Carmen fill me in, what’s going on now? “We’re the dessert team, three of us and Mark is the chef. Papaya with Raspberry and Raspberry sauce and for the decoration we’re going to have some chocolate sprigs.” But this is not a cooking show but it is somehow is supposed to relate to your business skills, how do you see that playing out? “Mainly we came here we had to organize ourselves, divide into different teams and into which team was going to be food, which one is going to cover the presentation and which other team was going to cover the entertainment piece. Then between the inside the cooking team we have to distribute about 40 chefs, one of them the dessert and we had to organize ourselves into which ones were going to cover the dessert, which one the main dish, and which one the side dishes.” So there really can’t be any stars around here? “Well we have some leaders we had to assign specific leaders for each team and some coordinators and we’re meeting like every 15 minutes the coordinators are meeting in the middle. So everybody can get an update on how all of the other parts are doing. So it takes a lot of coordination and organization.”

Ralph Johnson a 1992 graduate is shouting encouragement over the din of cooking going from tent to tent. He stops to compare his orientation experience with the one he sees today, “When I came to the University of Michigan Business School, at that time our orientation was two days and one day of it was taking pre-exams so it was nothing like so grand as all of this. But what I took away from it was a lot of the same kind of things It’s important to work as a team. It’s important to be a good colleague. It’s important to know how to build consensus. It’s important to know how to compromise. And importantly it’s really important to figure out how are you going to get done the tasks that you need to get done because in business nobody is ever going to get done all of the stuff that you need. You have to figure out how to do what you need to do with all that you got.”

The pitch builds as students scurry around and the still sunny skies are threatening to break with thunder storms as the winds begin to whip up. “Twenty minutes left, exactly twenty minutes left.” While the business students are deep into their final challenge, I find Dean Robert Dolan who will be one of the judges to taste six different versions of chicken. He says there are two objectives, “One is to kind of for them to get them started on their leadership training but I think it’s also for us to say, you know it’s very easy to say we’re a very innovative school, but you know how do you kind of show that? So I think this kind of activity and the obvious risks that it involves with you know maybe the thunderstorms will come but who knows what we’ll do, but the willingness to take the risk if the pay off is going to be there.”

The cooking is done. The six sections of 70 students each grab their seats under the tent awaiting their turn. How does it look to Carmen? “I think we’re going to win.” Hopefully. “We’ve got a great menu here.” And suddenly it is time. Carmen’s team is called up. “Section number five if you’re ready to present to the judges, please do so.” As we await the judges decision and as the winds get even more threatening I ask Carmen how these competitions have helped launch her two year MBA at Ross. “This feels like a clear idea, that the Ross program it’s based in action and that’s what they always tell us. That leadership has to be learned in the field and it’s not enough that we can read about it and maybe discuss it. I felt that here because some lectures but most of it has been field work so it’s feels really great. I think that’s an introduction to Ross is going to be all work and all action and to be able to, it’s raining, to be able to learn by doing and not only by reading.” So what do you think that you’re going to take away from this experience? Take home in terms of your work, your job, you know where you go next? “The main idea that I get from all of these experiences of working in groups is to plan everything to set your goals in the beginning. To not be afraid to change them in the course of your actions because sometimes you have to accommodate things that doesn’t work like that. I think the most important thing was to set your goals clear and plan ahead and don’t lose your flexibility to make some changes ahead of time.”

Carmen offers her insight into what you can take away from her experience and whether an MBA from Ross is right for you, “If you want to know whether you’re going to be a good fit with Ross, you have to be willing to act. And here it is everything about attitude, if you’re more a person who wants to be sitting around and be lectured or you’re not comfortable with interacting so much with people then Ross is not a place for them. Because Ross is also about interacting with people, learning about leadership by acting, by participating with people you don’t even know and being open to get to know these people from all over the world.” It sounds like this is a good model for how to an MBA, a leader in the world. “Yeah I think so and I think that’s the whole idea of Ross.” Maybe that’s a little bit a part of the whole package; I mean Ross has kind of tossed you all kinds of different challenges this week, a little bit of chaos, a little bit of confusion. “I think never get too comfortable, I think they tried to get us out of our comfort zone and you never know what to expect and I think that was the idea. When we came to this challenge they worked a lot to not let us know what the challenge is going to be. We just learned it when we came here. So the whole idea to never know what to expect and be able to improvise and use your creativity and innovation to work things out.” And now we better go take cover, don’t you think? “Yeah I think so.”

Thanks for listening to a day in the life at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, stay tuned to MBApodcaster.com for our next exciting adventure.

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About MBA Podcaster

MBA Podcaster is your online source for information, insight, and advice on the MBA admission process. We deliver relevant information and advice through biweekly audio segments for those planning to apply for a Master in Business Administration. Topics include everything from a behind-the-scenes view of the admission process to post-MBA job opportunities and current market trends. Guests include Deans of various business schools, alumni, corporate recruiters, MBA consultants and more. On each segment we go in-depth on a particular topic of interest to an MBA applicant and interview relevant experts to help make your application process more efficient and successful. Listen for this week’s newest topic or browse our archive for the specific information you need to know. Drop us a line and tell us what you’d like to hear: info@mbapodcaster.com